


Passing Time

by Rubywolf



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Thasmin if you squint
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-01
Updated: 2019-03-17
Packaged: 2019-11-07 06:43:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17955542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rubywolf/pseuds/Rubywolf
Summary: An escape gone slightly wrong drags Yaz into a place she never could have imagined.





	1. Chapter 1

“RUN!” 

Yaz’s feet pounded the ground as she sprinted towards the Tardis, hot wind rushing in her ears and drowning out the sounds of her friends running behind her. Sometimes running was fun, but today the adrenaline and fear pushed her faster than she thought she’d ever run, like she was accessing energy in her muscles she’d never been able to reach before. She skidded to a halt in front of the Tardis, fumbling in her jacket pocket for her Tardis key, and managed to get the door unlocked just as Ryan and Graham ran up behind her, considerably slower than she’d been.

“Where’s the Doctor?” she asked, panicked, as they piled into the Tardis, gasping for air.

“I’m right here, close the door!” the Doctor sprinted past them and up to the console, a blonde and silver blur, and slammed the lever on the Tardis into place just as Yaz managed to fling the door closed in the face of one of their pursuers. The beast crashed into the door, making the whole ship shake as it dematerialized.

“All here? All alright?” the Doctor asked, leaning over with her hands on her knees, panting.

Ryan slumped to the floor, letting his feet spread out in front of him. “Fine, thanks,” he said with a twinge of good-natured sarcasm. “Just outran the weirdest looking aliens of my life, nothing unusual.”

“Really, Doc, can we check and make sure there’s not an active slave trade on the next planet we go to?” Graham asked, leaning against the Tardis wall as his breathing slowed. “Preferably before we land?”

“Probably a good idea, Graham,” the Doctor admitted. “Sorry. Thought they’d done away with that by the time we landed.”

“Well obviously not!”

“Alright, don’t go on about it! More security measures next time, I promise.” The Doctor stood up and flipped a few switches on the Tardis console, and glanced over at Yaz. “All right over there?”

Yaz laughed. “I haven’t run that fast in my entire life.”

The Doctor grinned. “Adrenaline will do that to you! Things you never knew you could do, even when-“ she stopped short, staring at Yaz with an unreadable expression. “Where’d you get that?”

“Get what?”

The Doctor hurried over to Yaz and took her hand, and for a wild moment Yaz wondered why the Doctor was suddenly being so serious about hand holding when she noticed the glowing red device on her wrist, like a smartwatch but with three metal bands reaching around to a futuristic looking buckle. “Oh… what’s this?” Yaz asked, surprised.

“Looks like a tracker and recall device, ohhh this is bad,” the Doctor said, an uneasy edge to her voice. “We’ve got to get this off, right now.” She sonicked the device, to no avail, and finally dragged Yaz up to the console.

“When you say recall…?” Ryan asked, picking himself up off the floor.

“I mean recall, Ryan, could be just for the person wearing it or they could expand the affected field and get the whole Tardis too.” Her tone was too quick, too worried, and she dug through a storage area below the console surface as she talked.

“How did they get this on me without me knowing?” Yaz asked as she picked at the buckle with a fingernail, noticing that it appeared fused shut. “I mean, I was nowhere near them!”

“We’ll figure that out later,” the Doctor said, pulling out a giant pair of metal clippers and trying to slip the thinner end between the bands and Yaz’s wrist. “Anyone else got one?”

“No,” Ryan confirmed.

“Hold still, Yaz,” the Doctor told her, wedging one end of the metal cutters on the console and leaning her weight into the other end.

A loud clang, like a warning alarm, from the Tardis made everyone jump. “No, no no no!” the Doctor yelped as the device suddenly illuminated around Yaz’s wrist. She threw her weight behind the metal cutters once more, bending the band but not breaking it. The Doctor threw the metal cutters to the floor and inspected it. “It’s looser, can you get your hand through?”

The Tardis clanged again, and Yaz desperately tried to squeeze her hand through the small circle of metal. “Maybe,” she said, feeling the metal scrape around the skin of her palm painfully. “It won’t… it’s still too tight,” she cried as the Tardis clanged a third time, and the device began pulsing.

The Doctor found a different size of metal cutters and managed to break one of the three bands, just as the Tardis clanged a fourth time and the world around Yaz began to glow red too. The device seemed to take on it’s own gravity, pulling on Yaz as the Doctor tugged on the device while Yaz struggled to pull her hand out of it.

“YAZ!” The Doctor screamed, reaching for Yaz’s arm as she slipped from her grasp and into the void.

Yaz was falling, spiraling out of control with no way to stop, nothing to hold on to, and the device finally slipped off her hand and vanished completely. Colors and nebulas and hints of faces flashed before her eyes, too fast to focus on. Once or twice she felt herself slam into something, sending her spiraling in a different direction. She squeezed her eyes shut, head burning and dizziness threatening to make her heart burst out of her chest. Something else slammed into her, and she grasped for it desperately, feeling it slip through her fingers-

And then she landed with a crash and a pathetic whimper. She gasped for air, unable to move or breathe or place the voices she could hear through the high keening in her ears. The world twisted, and she realized someone was trying to help her sit up. Yaz caught a glimpse of blonde hair just before the world went black.


	2. Chapter 2

The comforting whir of the Tardis was the first thing she registered as she struggled to pull herself back into the land of the living. Indistinct voices were still sounding around her, and she opened her eyes blearily to see the Doctor and Ryan, deep in conversation a few feet away. Yaz sucked in a deep breath through her teeth and rolled to one side, dragging herself into a sitting position on an unfamiliar, cold grated floor. She frowned at it, willing her eyes to focus on it, trying to place what was wrong with her surroundings through the stabbing pain in her temple. The Doctor knelt next to her, asking her gentle questions in a voice that was all wrong, while Ryan sat down on the floor in front of her.

Yaz looked up, blinking and squinting several times until Ryan’s face came into focus- rounder, a tad lighter, more intense. “You’re not Ryan,” she managed. 

“No, that’s Mickey,” the Doctor said, and Yaz turned to squint at her. She was all wrong too- too young, wearing all the wrong clothes. “And I’m Rose.”

“Huh?” was all Yaz could manage.

“Was that you that overrode the controls?” Rose asked curiously. “The Tardis never goes completely rogue like that. How’d you do it?”

“I didn’t… didn’t do… oh, my head,” Yaz groaned, leaning forward until she was curled in a ball on the floor, hands pressed into her eyes. “Where’s the Doctor?”

“You know the Doctor too?” Mickey asked. “Am I actually the last person in the universe to properly meet him or what?”

“Mickey, shut up!” Rose scolded him, not unkindly. “What’s your name?” she asked, a hand on Yaz’s shoulder.

“Yaz,” she managed after a minute, pushing herself back up and looking at Rose. “Seriously, where’d the Doctor go?” Her voice sounded strained, even to her ears, and her entire body hurt. If she could just get the Doctor to take her home, let her sleep…

“He ran off to go get a sonic blood pressure cuff or something,” Rose said, a corner of her mouth curling up in affectionate annoyance. “He’ll be back in a minute. Or a couple hours, depending on whether he gets lost again or not. How do you know him, anyway?” she asked, but Yaz never got the chance to answer.

“Right, then! Let’s have a look.” A tall, skinny man in a brown suit with utterly ridiculous hair bounded into view, carrying a handful of gadgets Yaz couldn’t hope to recognize. “Oh, she’s up, brilliant. I’m the Doctor, just hold still for a minute and we’ll get this all sorted out.” He plopped himself onto the ground in front of her, right next to Mickey, and started shining a blue light in her eyes.

Yaz batted his hand away grumpily. “You’re not the Doctor- what is that thing?” she asked, as he insistently continued scanning her with it.

“It’s a sonic screwdriver, now hold still.”

Now that Yaz thought about it, it did sound like the Doctor’s sonic, but everything was _wrong_. She batted his hand away once more, squinting against the noise and the light that seemed to bore straight into her brain. “No, really. Can’t you just tell the Doctor to take me home?”

“I promise you, I am the Doctor,” he told her, “and I’m not going to take you anywhere until I figure out what happened to you and make sure you’re alright. What do you remember? What happened?”

Yaz pressed her hands into her eyes again. “It hurts so much. I’m going to be sick.”

“Oh, please don’t, do you have any idea how hard this grate is to clean up? Here, lie down. See if that helps.”

It did help, a little bit, and Yaz took a few deep breaths to try and keep the nausea at bay. “We’d just escaped the Regworrian slave traders, they had a recall or something on me but we’d already taken off, I couldn’t get it off and then I was falling… and then I ended up here.”

The noise of the sonic stopped and there was an awkward silence. “You fell through the time vortex,” the Doctor said, half a statement and half a question. “Humans don’t usually survive the untempered schism. How’s your head?”

Yaz felt like she was going to cry, the burning was intensifying behind her eyes. “Hurts.”

There was a shuffling sound, footsteps, and a minute later a hand slid under her neck. “Open your eyes,” the Doctor said.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

“Yes, you can, and you have to so I can help you. Trust me.”

It was the hardest thing she’d ever done, but Yaz forced her eyes open, a pathetic groan escaping through her clenched teeth as the burning seemed to spread through her whole body.

And suddenly, the burning sensation drained out of her, leaving her feeling light as a feather and somehow, perfectly silly for laying on the floor. She blinked several times, looking up at the three faces staring down at her. 

“Better, eh?” the Doctor asked with a familiar grin, and for the first time Yaz started to believe that maybe, just maybe, this was the same Doctor. She _had_ mentioned being a bloke.

“Loads,” Yaz answered, sitting up. “Thanks.”

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Yasmin Khan… My friends call me Yaz.”

“Nice to meet you, Yaz. I’m assuming we’re friends, right, I can call you that?”

Yaz laughed. “Yeah.” Definitely the same Doctor.

“So if you fell through the time vortex, how’d you end up in the Tardis?” Rose asked, confused. “Is that what all that noise was about a few minutes ago?”

Yaz had no idea how to answer that question, and looked over at the Doctor for an answer.

He shrugged. “Must have been. My best guess…” he stood up and fiddled with something on the console, “is that she’s from somewhere in my future, and when she got recalled the Tardis tried to catch her and got the timing a bit off.” He gave Yaz a scrutinizing look. “The Tardis must really like you, to go to all that trouble. How far into my future are you from? How old am I?”

Yaz was at a loss. “I… have no idea. You’ve never said.”

“Hmm. What am I like? No, wait, don’t tell me, better to let it be a surprise. No, actually, I have to know. Am I finally ginger?” he asked eagerly.

Yaz chuckled. “No. You’re blonde. Bit like her.” She gestured to Rose, unsure just how much she should actually tell the Doctor about his upcoming changes.

The Doctor turned his scrutinizing gaze to Rose, as though he was assessing her for the first time. “Huh. Alright, I’ll take it.”

“How about me?” Rose asked excitedly. “What am I like in the future?”

Yaz paused, glancing up at Rose, which seemed to tell her all she needed to know. Rose fixed the Doctor with a sharp stare. “Doctor? Where am I in your future then?”

“Well I haven’t done it any more than you have, how do I know?” he asked defensively. “Besides, that’s not really the point right now.”

“Oi, yes it is! What happens to me?” Rose turned to Yaz with an almost aggressive stare.

“I don’t know, I swear,” Yaz said, taken aback.

“Rose, leave her alone,” Mickey waved Rose off. “You didn’t think you were going to do this forever, did you?”

It was clear from Rose’s expression that yes, she had expected to travel with the Doctor forever. “ _An_ yway,” the Doctor said, pointedly speaking up before Rose could have the chance to start. “We’ve got to figure out how to get you back to future me, preferably right around the same time you left,” he told Yaz. 

Rose started to say something, but the Doctor started up a steady stream of chatter that didn’t let her get a word in edgewise. “The question is, then, how do we send you back? If we still had the recall, we could reverse it and send you back that way. But it seems that the Tardis caught you, so there’s nothing to reverse, so that’s not going to work.” He paused thoughtfully, punching a few buttons on the console and turning a monitor around to read it, then plugging the sonic into a spot on the console and twisting another knob. “And there’s not enough signal on you for the Tardis to pick up and send you back that way, the way you came, except not through the Time Vortex, that would be a terrible idea.”

“Couldn’t you just… I don’t know… take me home, and I’ll wait for you there, and you can write yourself a post-it note to come get me after it happens?”

The Doctor looked up at her with a surprised and slightly horrified expression. “Absolutely not, what if I lost the note?”

Yaz stared at him in disbelief, surprised he’d shot down a perfectly good idea for such a stupid reason. “Well, don’t lose it!” she exclaimed.

He carried on with his train of thought, now thoroughly ignoring her protests too. “Although, if we had a more reliable way to send a message to my future self… not through the Tardis, you never know when the systems will reboot and what might get lost in the process. She has been known to completely redo everything. I had a brilliant recipe for boeuf bourginion stored, straight from Julia Child, and then she redecorated and that recipe is gone forever. So not through the Tardis, and definitely not on a post-it.” He glanced at Yaz out of the corner of his eye. 

“You honestly don’t think you’ll remember me dropping by when you literally see me get sucked into the Time Vortex?” Yaz asked dryly.

“Apparently his memory isn’t that great in the future, if he doesn’t remember me,” Rose snarked from the other side of the console, arms crossed.

“Unless you have a way of telling how far ahead in my future you’re from,” he said pointedly, talking over Rose, “I’m not going to rely on memory to get you home, I can barely remember what I had for breakfast this morning. Or did I have breakfast?” He paused, as if trying to remember. “Well, that’s not important.”

“So what are you gonna do then? Seems like you’ve shot down all the logical ideas,” Mickey said.

“I’m working it out, I’ll come up with something. Just need a good plan.”

Yaz played with the zipper on her jacket as she thought. “So, the Tardis reformats every now and again, right? But it still has to keep the same basic programming,” she thought aloud. “So, what if you modify the programming a bit? Set up like an if/then statement, where when it recognizes that I got dragged out, you set it up to like, I dunno, take future you to a specific location where we can meet up.”

All three faces turned to her in surprise. 

“What?” she asked self-consciously.

“Who are you?” the Doctor asked suspiciously.

“Yasmin Khan?” she said, as though she was uncertain.

“No, I mean, what are you? What planet are you from?” the Doctor stepped around the console and scanned Yaz with the sonic again. 

“What? I’m just a police officer from Sheffield! If you wanna be specific, I’m not even that, I’m still on probation.” Yaz raised her hands as she explained.

“So how do you know how to program a Tardis?” he asked, still eyeing her suspiciously.

“I don’t, I mean, you like to talk about it when I know you, you try to explain things at like, a million miles an hour so I don’t really get a lot of it… But you said just now that it reboots and deletes stuff, yet obviously some things still work the same when I know you. And I took a computer programming class in school, it was really boring actually, we just printed the usual “hello world” sequence and then talked about if/then sequences for almost the entire rest of the class. So, I dunno, if the Tardis operates under some of the same mechanics… I’m just trying to help you think of a way to get me home!” she said defensively.

He raised an eyebrow but seemed to accept her explanation. “Well, Yasmin Khan, if we can figure out how, that might actually work. Setting up an automatic command, she’s very unlikely to outright reject something like that. Thing is, I’ll need a bunch of tools I don’t have, a backup hard drive, three boxes of Thin Mints and a recording of Tchaikovsky’s piano concerto number 1, which come to think of it I already have.” He grinned, a familiar sort of manic energy taking over as he prepared the Tardis for takeoff. “Who’s up for a field trip?”


	3. Chapter 3

Yaz’s first thought was that they had landed at night, or perhaps in the middle of some kind of apocalypse. The dark bronze sky, peppered with faraway stars, cast the neat row of identical rectangular buildings in front of them into black and brown shadows, the light reflecting off the buildings tinged orange. Dust devils swirled ominously in front of the Tardis doors, and for maybe the first time ever, Yaz wondered for their safety on this planet. Even Desolation had been well-lit, if harsh, this just looked like an old Renaissance painting of hell.

“So, where are we?” she asked apprehensively, turning back to the inside of the Tardis.

“Junk planet, just outside of a little constellation halfway across the universe from Earth.” The Doctor pulled up a grate, yanked a trunk out of the opening and rummaged through it until he found what he was looking for and tossed the three humans each a torch.

“A junk planet?” Mickey asked, catching his torch with a confused look. “We’re going to scavenge for the tools you need?”

“Yes, Mickey, you didn’t think we were going to go purchase spare parts for the Tardis at a Curry’s, did you?” the Doctor asked impatiently, yanking a long brown coat off a pillar and pulling it on. 

“You don’t think there’s sonic mines out there, do you?” Yaz asked, standing on her tiptoes and peering out the windows at the hellscape in front of them. “That’s not an experience I’m eager to repeat.”

The Doctor frowned. “No, I doubt it. Sonic mines are awfully primitive technology in this corner of the universe.” He freed the sonic screwdriver from the Tardis console and tucked it away in a pocket before dashing for the door. 

Yaz, Rose and Mickey followed him out the doors, each of them stepping out in turn into the chilly air that made their breath steam up in front of them. “Why’s it smell like metal out here?” Mickey asked, glancing back towards the Tardis like he wanted to stay behind.

The Doctor was busy sonicking the air, slowly spinning in a circle and squinting at the device. “Because there’s a lot of metal here, Mickey, keep up.” He decided on a direction and motioned for them to follow, Rose immediately skipping to his side and matching stride. “Actually, I say it’s a junk planet, it was really more of a storage warehouse type thing. I mean you know how it is when you have a closet you never go in, ends up being sort of a catch-all for everything.”

“My mum’s got a drawer like that in the kitchen,” Rose laughed.

“And that cabinet in the bathroom, too, don’t wanna go poking around in there for a comb,” the Doctor added, teasingly nudging Rose with his elbow.

“Oh, you learn that from experience?” she teased back.

“Hey, this is a very carefully crafted look,” he replied, pinching at the edges of his hair, ensuring that they were still tousled just-so.

Mickey caught Yaz’s eye and rolled his eyes so hard Yaz thought they might disappear, and she gave him a sympathetic smile. Even when you were seeing the best and brightest of the universe, it couldn’t be any fun as the perpetual third wheel.

They reached the entrance to one of the warehouses, the Doctor sonicked it open, and they all stepped inside.

“Whoa,” Yaz breathed in awe. Stretching out before them were hundreds and hundreds of aisles of shelves, too many to count.

“It definitely didn’t look this big from out there,” Mickey said, confused.

“Yup,” the Doctor said with a small pop on the ‘p’, unbothered.

“It’s gonna take us years to find what you need,” Rose said. “You sure we’re in the right building?”

“Oh, definitely. I’ve been here before. Well, once. Well, once or twice. I had nothing to do with the fire, if that’s where you’re going with this.”

“If this is storage,” Yaz asked, “how do we know the people who own this place aren’t going to catch us here? They could have security systems in place. I mean, we’re basically stealing.”

“Hm?” The Doctor glanced up at her briefly. “Oh, well, there’s nobody left out in this little constellation. We’re very unlikely to run into anyone other than more scavengers. So! I think we’ll do best if we split up. Rose, Mickey, you guys are looking for a box. It’s going to be roughly the size of a shoebox, and it’ll have a few wires poking out the top, probably sitting on a little four-pointed stand so air can flow under it. Start over in those aisles. Yaz, with me, we’re going to find the tools we need.” 

Rose narrowed her eyes at Yaz and the Doctor, clearly not happy with the way they’d been split up. Rather than argue, she turned on her heel. “Fine. Let’s go, Mickey.”

The Doctor watched the other two head off, and finally turned to Yaz, pointing a finger in her face. “Alright. Rule one: Don’t wander off.”

“I… wasn’t going to?” Yaz said, confused.

He glanced at her with a familiar, confused scrunch of his nose. “Really?”

“Well, yeah, I mean where am I gonna go?”

He nodded, eyebrows raising and the corners of his mouth turning down as though he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Alright, then, well… good.” He nodded again and started down one of the aisles, leaving Yaz to follow him with her torch.

She followed him in silence for a few moments, watching the way the light from her torch cast stark, long shadows on the aisles and trying to invoke all of her police training to avoid getting creeped out. The soft echoing footsteps she could hear reverberating around the aisles were surely just Rose and Mickey’s, the smell of burning metal surely wasn’t recent, the corrugated metal walls definitely weren’t _breathing_ with the odd rhythm of the planet. Surely the creepy atmosphere was all in Yaz’s mind. After all, she was with the Doctor, she was safe.

Although, she couldn’t help comparing, if she’d been wandering through this warehouse with _her_ Doctor, there was no way she would be this quiet. Her Doctor would be chatting up a storm about something. This version seemed to have forgotten all about Yaz, as he picked through the contents of the shelves, only pocketing one or two items. He turned and noticed Yaz, again, with an air of surprise.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m following you… you told me not to wander off?” she replied incredulously. 

He actually laughed. “I knew someday I’d find someone who got it,” he said.

Yaz could only shake her head, amused. “Really though, this place is _well_ creepy.”

“It is a bit, isn’t it?” he asked. “Plays with your head.”

“Why is that? It’s just an abandoned old warehouse, right?”

“Mmm. Places like these were built before dimensional engineering technology was really perfected. Your brain knows there’s something off about the space, but it can’t figure out what, so it just gives you that uncanny feeling.”

Yaz shuddered. “Still feels like there’s intruders here.”

“Well, there are.”

“What?”

“We’re intruders, aren’t we?”

“I guess so.”

“Still.” He rummaged through another shelf, relatively unbothered, sonicking the contents of a box. “Never know what you’re going to find in places like these. I do have a knack for finding trouble.”

Yaz had to laugh. “Yes, you do.”

A strangled high-pitched scream came from somewhere in the warehouse, and the Doctor whirled around, instantly worried, sonic flickering off. “Rose!” he yelled, and sprinted off down the aisle, nearly too fast for Yaz to keep up. Something about his terror was infectious, and Yaz couldn’t stop the thought in the back of her mind that maybe this was what had happened to Rose, why the Doctor never spoke of her. 

His shoes slid across the floor as he skidded around a corner and to a stop, causing Yaz to almost have to leap over him to avoid crashing into him. She glanced up to see Mickey clinging onto the side of the shelving with a look of utter panic, while Rose leaned back against those same shelves, clutching her stomach with laughter.

The Doctor straightened up, his terror melting into annoyance. “Again with the shrieking, Mickey?”

“There were ROACHES!” Mickey hollered, sending Rose into new peals of laughter. “They’re the size of _softballs_ , how is that funny?” he demanded in a cracking voice, making no moves to get back down to the floor.

“Is that your solution for everything, then, screaming like a little girl? Roaches aren’t going to hurt you,” the Doctor told him, waving his hand in Mickey’s direction like that was going to force him to move. “Get on down from there, you’re going to pull the shelving down.”

“First the vaccum-packed rats and now giant roaches, though!”

“A fluffy rainbow unicorn jumper with the frilly skirt and pigtails, Mickey, that’s what I’m seeing right now. Get down.” The Doctor gave a huge sigh of irritation as Mickey hesitantly climbed down, carefully watching where he put his feet.

“It’s not funny, Rose,” Mickey griped as Rose tried to stop snickering.

“It’s a little funny,” she replied.

“Hold on…” Yaz caught sight of a label on the shelving and brushed her fingers over the strange circular writing, frowning at the residue the text left on the tips of her fingers. “Doctor, isn’t this your handwriting?”

“Hmm?” He came over to inspect it, frowning as well. “That’s not my handwriting, but how do you know that language?” he asked.

Yaz rolled her eyes. “I don’t _know_ it, I’ve just seen you write in it before.”

He opened the box behind the label, frowned at the contents, and put it back. “Why, do I write myself post-its that look like that or something?”

She detected a subtle tease, and she sort of wanted to melt into the floor. “No, well, sort of- I mean that’s a super embarrassing story.”

“For me or for you?”

“For me!” Yaz felt the heat rising into her cheeks.

The Doctor grinned. “Oh, well, that’s alright then, let’s hear it!”

Yaz made a little noise of protest, finally tossing her hands in the air when he continued to wait for her to speak with an interested smirk. “Oh, fine, alright, so you were at my place for tea and you were standing in the kitchen and Mum asked you to write something on her store list since you were like, right there, and you wrote it like that and she asked…” Yaz huffed, realizing that she was really going to have to tell the whole story. “She asked if you thought it was funny writing it in crop circles.”

The Doctor chuckled. “Right comedian, your mum.”

“Yeah, well, glad you thought it was funny both times now.” Yaz grumbled.

“Well, it is.” He grinned. “But we’re never going to get what we need standing around talking, let’s get back to it. Mickey, why don’t you come with me this time, I’ve got a feeling the girls can take care of themselves.”

Mickey protested as he followed the Doctor down the aisles, leaving Rose and Yaz on their own. Yaz glanced over at Rose, who was looking like she’d rather be stuck in a dimensionally-engineered warehouse with anyone but Yaz.

Rose stalked off, leaving Yaz to hurry behind her to catch up. “So. You and the Doctor, hm?” Rose asked coolly when she caught up. 

Yaz frowned. “What?”

“I mean, if he’s at your place, meeting your _Mum_ …” Rose shrugged, but it was anything but a casual shrug. “Sounds a bit like something going on to me.”

Yaz sighed, irritated. “Rose, I really don’t know what to tell you. It’s not like me and my friends travel with the Doctor specifically to annoy you. And I don’t know what happened to you, and I definitely didn’t end up here on purpose.”

“So the Doctor’s really not even mentioned me? At all?”

“I dunno… maybe in passing?” Yaz racked her brain. “She really doesn’t ever say anything about her past, well, except to name-drop historical figures,” Yaz grumbled, finally allowing herself to be annoyed by the realization. “We’ll get to hear all about Amelia Earhart and the cast of Hamilton and Queen Victoria, but nothing really about actual friends or family…” Yaz trailed off and suddenly looked over at Rose, one particular story told at lightning speed a few weeks ago suddenly coming back to her. “Wait. _Rose_. Was that you, then, in the story about Queen Victoria? And the werewolf? And you got her to say ‘we are not amused’??” Yaz found herself staring at Rose in much the same way she’d stared at Rosa Parks.

Rose started laughing. “Oh my god, he told you about that? Yeah, she totally did. Don’t think I ever got my tenner from him, though, thanks for reminding me!” 

“Oh that is _well_ cool. I love werewolves, or at least stories about them, it’s probably not as much fun to actually come across one. I dressed up as a werewolf for a Halloween party two years ago, got to scare my sister half to death.” Yaz grinned.

“Yeah, they’re a bit terrifying in real life,” Rose agreed with a smile. “Oh, let’s check down this way,” she said, shining her light down a dusty aisle. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that he doesn’t say much, though. I met an old friend of his a few weeks back and I’d literally never heard of her until she showed up. I just, I dunno, guess I thought I was different,” she finally admitted.

Yaz nodded, suddenly feeling like she was getting an odd glimpse into her own future. Is that what the Doctor did, then, traveled around with people and then never spoke of them again after something happened to them? “How many of us do you think there’ve been, then?” she asked hesitantly.

“Literally no idea,” Rose replied, shining her torch into a corner.

“Well, I’ve got a ton of questions to ask when I get back. I should start a list,” Yaz muttered. 

“Yeah, good luck with that. He tends to clam up when you ask him too much.” Rose stood on her tiptoes and pulled some boxes off a shelf. “What d’you think about these? Close enough to what he described?”

Yaz shrugged. “Didn’t he say it would have a stand?”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Rose put the boxes back. “So how long have you been traveling with him, then?”

Yaz shined her light down another aisle, frowning. “I guess it’s been nearly half a year? It’s hard to keep track of time when you travel all over it.”

“True.” Rose followed. “Seriously, though, what’s he like in the future? Since I’m apparently not there to see it myself.”

“Erm…” Yaz paused. “A bit the same, but different,” she said. “Still super talkative without ever really saying much. It’s like she’s on a perpetual sugar high, which come to think of it, she probably is, thanks to all the biscuits.” She realized Rose had paused, no longer in step with her, and looked around.

“She?” Rose asked with a grin.

Yaz groaned. “Ughh. See, I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that or not, but yeah.”

Rose suddenly started cracking up, and began walking in stride again with Yaz. “He regenerates into a _woman_? You’re sure we’re talking about the same Doctor, right?”

Yaz raised her eyebrows. “The same time-travelling alien with two hearts who flies around in a police box and can’t stop talking? Yeah, pretty sure.”

Rose cackled. “Oh my god. So when you said he’s blonde now…”

Yaz grinned despite herself. “Yeah, she looks just about like you. Thought you were her when I first woke up. Oh, I bet I’ve got a picture on my phone!” she suddenly realized, stopping short and pulling out her iPhone, scrolling through her photos to find a specific one.

“Ooh, now this is sleek. When is this from?” Rose asked curiously.

“2019,” Yaz replied. “Well, that’s what year I left, but I got this phone a couple years ago so I guess it’s 2017 tech. When are you from?”

“It was 2006 last time I was home,” Rose replied, looking over Yaz’s shoulder.

“Wow. So it’s only been 13 years, technically.” Yaz paused. “That’s so weird. I was 7, in 2006. Time travel is so…” she trailed off, not sure how to describe what she wanted to say. “Oh, here you go.” She brought up the picture she wanted, one Ryan had snapped of the Doctor showing her how to steer the Tardis, and handed the phone to Rose.

Rose’s jaw dropped, and she stared at the picture for a minute, speechless. “You’re kidding me.”

“Nope.” 

“Is that the Tardis? Are you _flying_ the Tardis??”

“Not really, no, she was just trying to show me how to steer it if I ever had to. Ryan was super jealous, he loves machines and she won’t let him touch anything unless she’s right there.” Yaz laughed. “I mean, she won’t let me touch anything unless she’s there, either, but still.” She swiped forward to another picture, one that Yaz had taken of the Doctor excitedly explaining something to Ryan as they stood at the console, hands flying, a slightly maniacal expression on her face.

Rose smiled at the picture. “I wonder how far ahead that is for her though.”

Yaz shrugged and stuffed the phone back in her jeans pocket. “Dunno. She mentioned that she used to be a bloke, but she mentioned being a white-haired Scotsman. I really wasn’t expecting, well, him.” She gestured behind them.

“So he’s regenerated at least twice since now,” Rose thought aloud. “Maybe that’s why I’m not there, maybe he just… outlives me.” She walked in silence for a beat. “I mean, he’s already super old, I guess I should have expected that, it’s just… weird.”

“When you say super old…?”

“Like, 900?” Rose squinted, trying to remember if he’d ever given her an exact number.

Yaz burst into giggles. “No!”

“I’m serious! At least, that’s what he said, sometimes it’s hard to tell if he’s being entirely serious.”

Yaz laughed. “Well, that much doesn’t change, at least. You’d think eventually we’d get used to the weirdness, but I’m always surprised. One minute you think you’ve got everything figured out, the next you’re herding around spiders with rap music and essential oils.”

“Oh she didn’t try to keep a spider as a pet or something, did she? Because he tried to adopt a horse a few days ago, and literally the last thing the Tardis needs is a horse.”

Yaz couldn’t stop laughing. “Sounds a bit John Mulaney to me, a horse loose in the Tardis.”

“Who?”

“Oh, man. He’s a comedian. Have the Doctor take you to a show sometime.” Yaz grinned, and just beyond Rose her eye caught on something very similar to the box they were on the lookout for. “I bet this is what we need,” she said, pulling the box down.

“Oooh, I bet you’re right.” Rose inspected it and nodded. “Let’s go find Mickey and the Doctor and get out of here. This place isn’t half creepy.”

“I knew it wasn’t just me,” Yaz told her.

Rose grinned. “You wanna see something really funny?”

Yaz raised her eyebrows, and Rose turned off her torch. Putting a finger to her lips, she snuck across the aisles, down the main walkway, and tiptoed up on Mickey, giving him a poke in the side.

The Doctor was right, Yaz decided with a grin. Mickey did scream like a little girl.

**Author's Note:**

> Well I didn't really need another WIP, but this is one I can post as I finish chapters! Enjoy!


End file.
